Agricultural harvesters, such as combines, remove a crop material from the field, gather the crop material and transport it to a separator on the harvester. The separator removes the grain crop material from the non-grain crop material. The grain is cleaned and deposited in a grain tank on the harvester. When the grain tank becomes full, the harvester is positioned adjacent a vehicle into which the grain is to be unloaded, such as a semi-trailer, gravity wagon, truck, etc.; and an unloading system on the harvester is actuated to transfer the grain from the grain tank directly into the vehicle. It is known for the unloading system to be fully contained on the harvester, and to include gravity discharge of the grain from the grain tank onto a conveyor for transport to an auger operable to only one side of the harvester so that the receiving vehicle must be positioned on that side of the harvester. The auger on the harvester deposits the grain directly into the receiving vehicle.
A trend in agricultural machines is for the size of the machines to become larger, reducing the number of passes required to cover a field. If the width of a harvester is increased, more grain is harvested during each pass over the field. Accordingly, the grain tank fills quickly. When breaking into a new field, or into a new area of a large field, if the harvester has made only a single pass or less than a complete pass through the field, there is no harvested area alongside the harvester in which to position the vehicle to receive the grain being transferred from the grain tank. So as not to trample non-harvested crop areas, wasting the grain therein, it is known to use the harvester to clear out an area in which to position vehicles for unloading. However, short area operation of a large harvester is difficult and inefficient. This process can be repeated several times across a large field to keep harvester travel times to a minimum on the ends of the field.
Further, when the harvester operates back and forth in adjacent paths from one end of a field to an opposite end of the field, if field is long it may be necessary to unload the grain tank at locations intermediate the ends of the field, with the harvester headed in either direction. Accordingly, it may be necessary to unload when the known unloading auger is on the side adjacent the non-harvested crop area. When this occurs, the harvester must be repositioned so that the receiving vehicle can be positioned in the harvested area. The harvester must be stopped for unloading in a situation such as described.
What is needed in the art is an unloading system that allows inline unloading rearward from the harvester.